United States Department of Justice and Microsoft’s 9-year antitrust agreement expires tomorrow

NetEase tech news on May 12,United States Department of Justice and a 9-year antitrust agreement Microsoft forthcoming United States Eastern time expired on 13th failure. United States Department of Justice said in recalling the agreement, it has permanent changes in the software market so that it becomes more open, equitable and dynamic.
In 1998, the United States Department of Justice and 19 States and the District of Columbia sued Microsoft in the Windows operating system bundled Internet Explorer browser, IE monopoly was reached, threatening the survival of competitors like Netscape. The protracted lawsuit until 2002 fall final judgment.

Judgment against Microsoft and then using any Windows operating system will lead to anti-trust behavior, and Microsoft must receive regular supervision of the judiciary was required to investigate, to ensure that PC manufacturers can place the competitor’s product in Windows. Microsoft Windows Service Pack (SP) has added a “set program access and defaults” feature.

However, the belated decision failed to save the fate of Netscape, the software to stop development, part of the team members into the future in the Firefox team. New York University Law Professor Harry First on Bloomberg, the decision in fact did not change in Microsoft’s operating system monopoly status, with little success.

Antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft also continuously thereafter. EU 2004 accusing Microsoft forced bundling of Windows Media Player is a monopoly, Microsoft had to be put on sale in Europe without a Windows version of the Windows Media Player, as well as compensation of 497 million euros to the European Commission. Since then the European Union in 2009, accused Microsoft IE browser as the default browser violated consumers ‘ right to choose, Microsoft had to EU users add a “default browser selection screen”, or even where browser sort of changes.

After 2002 and the United States Department of Justice Antitrust agreement expires, and will not give Microsoft any appreciable change, because whether it is Microsoft’s product line, is also Microsoft’s competitors, has been completely changed. Colombia University Professor Timothy Wu believes that the agreement led to the emergence of future innovations such as cloud computing, social networking, so it can be said that the agreement had in fact completed the mission.

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